Highlights From the Archives

Metropolitan Desk

By JOHN KIFNER; Glenn Collins and Michelle O'Donnell contributed reporting for this article.

Lenny Bruce, the potty-mouthed wit who turned stand-up comedy into social commentary, was posthumously pardoned yesterday by Gov. George E. Pataki, 39 years after being convicted of obscenity for using bad words in a Greenwich Village nightclub act. The governor said the posthumous pardon -- the first in the state's history -- was ''a declaration of New York's commitment to upholding the First Amendment.''